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State leaves District with $35M more to cut The Notebook blog
The state budget did not include funds for charter school reimbursements that the District was counting on.

School unions not willing to budge for budget Daily News
The District is counting on union contract changes to help balance the budget, but the unions are reluctant to agree to changes.

Eleventh-Hour Voucher Plan Dies For Lack of Support Keystone State Education Coalition
A last-minute push by Gov. Corbett to pass the voucher bill before summer recess did not succeed.

Inquirer Editorial: Grading Ackerman The Inquirer
If Ackerman stays, there’s still a lot of work left to be done.

Bringing in the union at Multi-Cultural Academy The Notebook blog
Teachers at Multi-Cultural voted to join a union for charter school teachers.

NWT Full Show, June 29, 2011 WHYY/NewsWorks
Reporter Benjamin Herold was on the show to discuss the draft facilities document the Notebook published Saturday.

Final day to double your gift The Notebook blog
We’re less than $1,000 away from our goal. Please join the Notebook today!

The Inquirer
The International Society for Technology in Education conference was in Philly this week.

Dr. Milicia leaves GAMP South Philly Review

Suburban Flight for Schools Not Default Choice Philly School Search

26 Philadelphia schools losing full-service kitchens The Inquirer

DeLissio Stands Alone on Education Vote Roxborough-Manayunk Patch

Grant Expands City’s Summer Programs. Roxborough-Manayunk Patch

Please if we missed anything today or if you have any suggestions of publications, email lists, or other places for us to check for news.

Differentiation Helps Students Reach Goals
How can teachers tailor product in response to readiness, learning profile and interest
by Kathy Glass

This is the 3rd segment of a three-part article on Differentiation. The first and second segment segments are also available from Whats Working in Schools.

In the first of this 3-part article series, Kathy defined differentiation and focused specifically on the key curriculum component of content. Additionally, readers learned how teachers can differentiate content in response to readiness, learning profile, and interest. In her second article, she continued the series by presenting ways in which teachers can tailor process – another curriculum component – in response to readiness, learning profile and interest.

As education-reform advocate Theodore Sizer stated : “That students may differ may be inconvenient, but it is inescapable. Adapting to that diversity is the inevitable price of productivity, high standards, and fairness to the students.” To ignore the fact that students – like all individuals – have various learning styles, interests, and levels of abilities is basically short-sighted and unfair to students. Differentiation is a call to action. It is a way that teachers can address the differences among individuals and groups of students so they get the most out of learning. Carol Tomlinson, a significant contributor to differentiation, offers this widely quoted definition: “In a differentiated classroom, the teacher proactively plans and carries out varied approaches to content, process, and product in anticipation of and response to student differences in readiness, interest, and learning needs” .

The content is the essential knowledge, understandings, and skills of a unit of study or even an individual lesson. It is the new information that teachers impart to students. To identify the content, educators would refer to district, state, or school content standards; access textbooks, curriculum, and other guides; and even defer to the expertise of colleagues or practitioners in the field. This combination of sources will most likely be needed to clearly identify the new content—what students should know, understand, and be able to do. Some refer to the content as the input since teachers are filling up students’ brains with new information. Sometimes it makes sense to differentiate content; other times it is not prudent. For instance, if teachers were to invite a guest speaker to the class to introduce or enlighten them on a concept or experience, all students would benefit from hearing this individual. Teachers might differentiate the activities that follow the talk.

After exposing students to unfamiliar information, teachers then need to devise opportunities for students to assimilate and apply the information presented in the content to make sense of this new material. This sense-making portion of the unit represents the process. It typically is the major portion of the unit as it represents all the activities students engage in, any homework and the specific lessons. Throughout the process, teachers also conduct many types of formative assessments as practice opportunities and to check for understanding.

Essentially, in a classroom teachers present new information and create a multitude of opportunities for students to work with these new ideas so they can learn them . After students grapple with this new information for a period of time that represents the length of the unit of study, students are then asked to demonstrate that they have indeed mastered the content presented. This is what the product is: evidence of learning after a considerable unit of study. Product is the culminating product or summative assessment that teachers issue for students to demonstrate understanding of a unit’s content and process.  Since content is what students should know, understand, and be able to do, the product should be designed in a way that allows students to demonstrate this learning and do so with a clear and appropriate criteria for success.  Some teachers issue a test after a given segment of learning, which signifies just one type of product.  But products also come in other forms. Teachers might consider issuing both a final exam and a different type of product for a comprehensive assessment of what students have come to know, understand, and be able to do.

In a language arts classroom, products can include a performance, poster project, interview, or formal writing assignment . In a science class, a summative assessment could be writing a lab report or building a kite in a physics unit. In math, students can respond to various math prompts and even create and solve their own based on criteria. Differentiating products is a powerful and valuable means of allowing students to exhibit what they have learned. Teachers might present the summative assessment to students at or near the beginning of the unit so they are well aware of expectations and have specific goals in mind as they work to accomplish each task that leads to the final product.

Teachers can differentiate content, process, and product in response to readiness, interest and/or learning profile.

Trainees will be taught about restraining techniques, legal powers to search pupils and practical tips to manage low-level disruption as part of an overhaul of teacher training, it has emerged.

New style courses will also place a greater emphasis on tackling bullying – particularly homophobic abuse – in schools.

The changes come amid concerns that training for many student teachers is too “theoretical”, leaving them ill-prepared for the realities of classroom life.

Failure to cope with bad behaviour is already seen as one of the main causes of staff abandoning the profession, with one-in-10 new teachers refusing to work in schools after training and a similar number leaving just a year into the job.

Charlie Taylor, the Government’s new expert adviser on behaviour, said: “Making sure trainee teachers get the right training in managing behaviour is a hugely important issue. Too many trainee teachers feel under trained, making them more likely to leave the profession.

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“The Government’s new teacher training strategy will include more specific training in understanding and managing behaviour for teachers, especially those working in challenging inner city schools. This will help ensure that new, young and talented teachers remain in what is a hugely rewarding career.”

A consultation document – published on Monday – sets out a new system of teacher training in England.

As reported in the Telegraph, it includes the introduction of tapered bursaries to attract the best graduates into the classroom, beefed up English and maths requirements to weed out trainees with a poor grasp of the three-Rs and new-style tests of interpersonal skills.

But ministers are also determined to use the reforms to crackdown on indiscipline in English state schools.

The consultation paper – Training Our Next Generation of Outstanding Teachers – said training courses would be changed to tackle “two specific weaknesses”; ability to teach reading in primary schools and managing behaviour at all levels.

More training will be based in schools, rather than universities, where tuition is often too theory-based, the document said.

It added: “Trainees who follow teacher training programmes that are led by schools… are more likely to find their training provided relevant knowledge, skills and understanding to teach their specialist subject, and better prepared them for the classroom and behaviour management.”

The consultation outlined plans to help local networks of schools to develop teachers as “behaviour specialists” who can work across their area to “improve the quality of training that trainees receive while on placements in schools”.

A Whitehall source said toughen-up behaviour training would focus on areas such as restraining violent pupils and giving staff more confidence to use powers to search for banned items. Under new rules, they can search pupils, bags and lockers for anything prohibited by school rules such as mobile phones, alcohol, drugs and stolen property.

Courses are also expected to place a bigger emphasis on the interpersonal skills needed to communicate better with pupils and offer “real life” advice to help trainees deal with low-level disruption, uncooperative children and irate parents.

On Monday, unions criticised the training strategy, saying the focus on recruiting top graduates risked alienating thousands of students.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: ““We should have demanding expectations of recruits into teacher training. It is, after all, the most important job in the country.

“We should not fall into the trap of thinking, however, that academic excellence necessarily makes someone a great teacher.”

The National College of Natural Medicine has a new healing garden named for Min Zidell, of the prominent South Portland family.David J. Schleich, president of the National College of Natural Medicine, scraped his leg Friday morning, and one of the teachers said, Why don’t you just go out in the garden and pick something.”

He was kidding, but one day that may be a common activity in the Min Zidell Healing Garden, an 11,000-square-foot botanical garden that opened Friday, June 24, on the campus of the South Portland college.

This is a long-cherished dream, Schleich said during a dedication ceremony, to have a sanctuary we could share with the greater Portland community.

The garden is a $150,000 gift to the medical college from South Portlands Zidell family. It’s named to honor Min Zidell, the familys 87-year-old matriarch, a philanthropist and longtime patient of naturopathic medicine.

It opens up a window on a field for people to get help, Zidell said when asked what the garden meant to her, adding, it will be lovely place to get married.

The garden will serve as an outdoor classroom and an oasis of calm in an urban environment, officials said.

Planning for the garden began in 2009, when Portland firm Drakes 7 Dees won the landscape contract. Drakes brought in landscape designer Vanessa Gardner Nagel to oversee the gardens design in conjunction with NCNMs expert herbalists, Dr. Glen Nagel (no relation) and Dr. Paul Kalnins.

The garden includes a combination of unusual elements surrounding more than 500 botanical and ornamental plants. Drakes, along with several other local and regional landscape companies, donated many of the plants in the garden.

Vanessa Nagel said one design challenge was marrying the school’s two themes of classical Chinese medicine and naturopathic medicine. Chinese style was fairly easy, she said, and for naturopathic design she chose art nouveau, with its tendrils, leaves and flowers.

One expression of this design theme is a pebble mosaic illustrating hawthorn berries, which are important in both classical Chinese and naturopathic medicine.

A bronze statue of Sun Simiao, a physician in ancient China, in the Min Zidell Healing Garden.

The garden features a mystic knot labyrinth for walking meditation; a tea house donated by tea maker Sokenbicha; and a bronze statue of ancient Chinese physician Sun Simiao that has an estimated value of $100,000. The statue was donated by Chinese businessman Huo Baozhu, who also gave the city a full-size reproduction of the Shang Dynasty bronze elephant statue in the North Park Blocks.

It’s an incredible gift to the city and this neighborhood, said Patrick Quinton, executive director of the Portland Development Commission, which has invested millions in South Portland.

As a naturopath, I see a nature path, Glen Nagel said. I see a teaching and learning garden, from the cooling bitterness of wormwood to the relaxing smell of valerian, to the spiciness and hotness of cayenne pepper.

The garden is open to the public.

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You have to look hard to find anything about school counseling services or the role of the school counselor in the outdated No Child Left Behind education law. Currently, the only place the definition of the school counselor can even be located is in a small, discretionary grant program called the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling program. This program, housed in the disappearing Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools (OSDFS), started out as a pilot in a school district in Iowa more than a decade ago. The purpose of the three-year grant is simple: To create and enhance a district’s comprehensive school counseling program. Funds can be used for hiring personnel, professional development, and school counseling curricula. Since its inception, the need for this program and school counseling services has grown so much that the Department of Education (ED) receives far more applications than they can come close to considering.

Urging Congress to fund this program year after year has been challenging to say the least – even when the economy wasn’t tanking.  This year has been more challenging than most, especially for education funding. The infamous HR 1 introduced at the beginning of the current Congress was a huge attack on education funding which, as originally written, eliminated the school counseling program. Miraculously, after the final Continuing Resolution was passed and the FY 11 year finalized, the school counseling program managed to survive once again with only the slightest cut (less than $3 million total). This was a huge victory as we saw countless education programs completely leveled and the OSDFS taking cuts totaling 28%.

 While we’re very used to having the funding fight year after year, the House majority has presented us with a new challenge. The recently introduced HR 1891, a measure that would repeal 43 education programs (including the school counseling program), made it through committee with only one amendment passing which would save the currently unfunded Parental Involvement program. While it is unknown when HR 1891 will get to the House floor, we do expect it will pass on a party line vote.

Despite the extremely tough budgetary times on the federal level, the state level and especially the district level, it isn’t all bad news for school counseling. We continue to celebrate the evolution of the school counselor as an integral educator in the school building. School counselors are more than the adult down the hall who assists students with scheduling. Instead, they have proven their effectiveness in increasing student achievement, closing the achievement gap and ensuring students are enrolled in rigorous coursework to help prepare them for life after high school. Each year the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) highlights the best in the profession with the School Counselor of the Year program. After a rigorous application process a selection committee of education stakeholders selects up to 9 finalists and one winner to come to Washington, DC to participate in 3 days of professional development and festivities. The event concludes with a black-tie event to honor these outstanding professionals that make a difference in the lives of students. I urge you to spread the word and think about the professionals that work in your school building. Do you know an outstanding school counselor? Nominations are quick and simple to fill out. The deadline has been extended until August 15. Submit a nomination here.